Chicago – February 15, 2022: element14.com, an Avnet community, has announced the winners of its annual Community Awards, where top innovators, designers and engineers are celebrated across multiple categories.

The awards highlight the incredible work being done on element14.com every day by the diverse group of community members from around the world. And in 2021, for the first time, there were 5 top members of the year, instead of just one, in addition to 10 rising contributors.

“We are so grateful for the contributions of each and every one of our over 800,000-strong global community,” said Dianne Kibbey, Global Head of Community and Social Media for element14. “With so many incredible projects, designs, ideas, videos and reviews, we wanted to celebrate as many of our members as possible and have multiple winners for many of the categories this year.”

The winners of the element14 2021 Community Awards are:

• Top 5 Members of the Year – Jan Cumps, Don Bertke, Doug Wong, Shabaz Yousef and Frank Milburn all greatly contributed to the element14 Community in 2021.
• Rising Contributors of 2021 – Gary Yohe, Scott Stobbe, Andrew Johnson, Sean D. Conway, Michael Zurek, Enrique Albertos Ciervide, Steve K. Kruglewlcz, Navadeep Ganesh U, Rushiraj Jawale, and raspberrypitechguy all made significant contributions to the community in 2021 and are makers to watch for the future.
• Design Challenger of the Year – Enrique Albertos Ciervide – Enrique Albertos Ciervide  took a practical approach to fighting the spread of COVID-19 by designing VenTTracker, an IoT device that monitors gas density and controls windows in a given area, which also made him the grand prize winner for the Design for a Cause design challenge.
• Project14 Projects of the Year 2021 –Viewing Noise with a Measurement Amplifier and Instrument Control Board – Both Shabaz Yousef’s incredible work creating a measurement amplifier for noise and Andrew Johnson’s creation of an instrument control board stand out as the top Project14 designs for 2021.

• The Best element14 presents Video Project of the Year – DIY Star Trek Tricorder – The element14 Community voted for the winner of this award and selected the DIY Star Trek Tricorder built by James Lewis. This fun, Star Trek themed video was a standout from the Build Inside the Box competition in 2021. 

• The Favorite RoadTested Products of 2021 – Rohde & Schwarz NGU401 Source Measure Unit, Digilent 1×1 USB Software-Defined Radio Platform, and Raspberry Pi Pico – elemenet14 polled the community for the best of the many products available for RoadTests in 2021. The above three products came in first, second and third place respectively.

• The Best RoadTest Reviews of 2021 – Multiple Winners – With so many impressive RoadTest reviews this year, element14 did a roundup of all of the best ones, including the Best Student RoadTester of 2021, The Best “New” RoadTesters of 2021, The Best Emerging Technology Reviews of 2021, and the overall The Best RoadTest Reviews of 2021. 

• Project14 Decider, Founder, and Influencer of the Year 2021 – Frank Milburn, Jan Cumps, and Gary Yohe. Since members of the element14 community play such an integral role in the Project14 design challenges, including determining the themes for the monthly series, element14 is recognizing three members for their invaluable contributions in judging, sharing ideas for new themes and contributing to the projects.

• Best Webinar of 2021 – Summer of FPGAs – element14 produces multiple webinars and other educational content each year. The Summer of FPGAs webinar around getting started with FPGAs stands out for the engagement it received from the webinar audience.

The annual Community Awards are one of the many ways that element14 celebrates the success of its community of engineers and makers as they harness the power of electronics design to make a positive impact on their communities and the world.

To learn more about the 2021 Community Awards, visit element14.